GRANITE PEAK PUBLICATIONS: Accompanying travelers to the national park since 2002

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Yellowstone is closed until further notice

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Were you, as we were, planning a trip to the park this summer? The COVID-19 outbreak means we all need to practice social (physical) distancing, which now means a need to cancel those travel plans. Last week, concessionaire Xanterra announced they are suspending their operations (lodging, campgrounds, dining, and tours) through May 21 (see https://www.yellowstonenationalparklodges.com/coronavirus/). Yesterday, the National Park Service made the unusual but prudent decision in tandem with gateway county health departments that they have to follow suit. NPS closed both Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park to visitors until further notice. To quote from the news release: “There will be no visitor access permitted to either park. State highways and/or roads that transcend park/state boundaries and facilities that support life safety and commerce will remain open.” So one thing that is not clear at the moment is what happens to travel on the Northern Range road between Gardiner and Silver Gate. Another question no one can answer yet is, When will the parks be able to reopen?

Please stay tuned to this website, because we will soon have news about the guidebook and a short-term sale. On Friday we announced the publication date for the sixth edition of Yellowstone Treasures on our Media Kit. For now, the best advice is stay home, stay healthy!

Park visitation levels off

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visitors on hot spring boardwalk

Yellowstone Treasures editor, author, and granddaughter visit Hot Lake on Firehole Lake Drive, Yellowstone, June 22, 2013.



According to the Big Sky news website, www.explorebigsky.com, visitation to the park has leveled off since its peak in 2016. Here are the figures the Montana website presents.

Yellowstone Visits by Year

  • 2019 – 4,020,287
  • 2018 – 4,114,999
  • 2017 – 4,116,525
  • 2016 – 4,257,177
  • 2015 – 4,097,710
  • 2014 – 3,513,486

Explore Big Sky does not hazard a guess as to why visiting Yellowstone National Park has stopped increasing. Certainly summer will still bring crowds. Do you have an answer or even a reasonable speculation about this pattern of visitors? Are you planning a trip in 2020? Please write and let us know!

Getting ready for the summer season

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Kudos to Sean Reichard for keeping us up-to-date on various Yellowstone issues!

First, I was glad to learn from yellowstoneinsider.com that Superintendent Dan Wenk will not be leaving Yellowstone soon, as reported recently. He has been doing an excellent job. I was privileged to meet him during a January 2012 Tauck Tour of the Park.

Today, I learned from Sean that as of June first, 2018, not only will the fee to enter either Yellowstone or Grand Teton go up from $30 to $35 (good for one week), but one can no longer buy a joint annual pass to both parks.

At least, we can be thankful that after strong negative reaction from the public, the fees did not rise to the originally proposed $70.

Geyser watching as family sport—beats TV!

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Grand Geyser

Grand Geyser (2013)

Here is an excerpt from an article in the February/March 2018 issue of The Geyser Gazer Sput that went straight to my heart. This family,the Altstidl’s, lives near the Bavarian Alps.

GOSA: How long have you been geyser gazing?
The parents first fell in love with Yellowstone in 1994 and so decided to return in 1997 with the twin boys. They were only 13 months old, but not too young to enjoy Echinus Geyser. Since 2001, we have been coming back to this beautiful place every year and, with time, developed our passion for geysers. While waiting for our first major geysers like Grand and Great Fountain, we were taught about the things to look for by a lot of very helpful and friendly people and learned they were part of the GOSA community. We began subscribing to the Geyser Gazer Sput in 2007 and have enjoyed being part of the community ever since.

GOSA: How did your family begin geyser gazing?
Initially, we used the predictions provided by the National Park Service. We still remember waiting for Madison VC to open on our way from West into the basin to get some information and plan our day. Those were the days before we had the Internet! With the children still in a stroller we already tried to wait for at least Echinus, Daisy and Grand. We were so lucky that the boys were very patient.

But I think what really got us hooked in the first place was the nice atmosphere while waiting for Great Fountain. The anticipated eruption with sparkling diamonds combined with blue at the bottom just took our breath away. It was there where Jeff Davis and Lynn Stephens started teaching us where to look to make our “own” predictions and told us about other geysers not predicted by the NPS like Fountain and Artemisia. After that we got “fireworks” at Grand; rainbows at Beehive; thumps at Oblong; playful, never tiring Fountain; mystic, blue-green Artemisia; soaking, funny Fan and Mortar; and graceful, blue and high Morning. So many eruptions which brought us joy and delight, but also the feeling of awe and gratefulness. We always saw something new or interesting. Attached to almost every geyser are memories of people sharing knowledge and giving advice. Such an openness, especially towards foreigners, was what made it special and we feel like part of a huge family now.

Excerpted from The Geyser Gazer Sput, Vol. 32, No. 1, February/March 2018, by permission of editor Pat Snyder. Photo credit: Beth Chapple, June 23, 2013.

I’ve been privileged to see eruptions of all ten of the wonderful geysers mentioned here, even though I get only a very limited time in the Upper Geyser Basin each summer. The Altstidl’s mention of their children being patient reminds me of how my then-six-year-old granddaughter Lexi made no complaint about our hour-long wait for Grand Geyser to erupt; perhaps small children sense that something wonderful is about to happen.

You, too, can become a member of the now thirty-year-old Geyser Observation and Study Association. Write c/o Bill Johnson, PO Box 5031, White Rock NM 87547; email store@gosa.org; or sign up on the website: www.gosa.org.

Proposed fee changes for national parks

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The National Park Service has announced a proposal to charge larger fees for seventeen of its most popular parks, beginning next spring. I learned about this through the excellent KQED California Bay Area radio program, “Forum,” and considered registering a comment with the NPS.

Considering the dire condition that many of our parks are now in due to underfunding by the federal government, it probably makes sense to raise entrance fees for people who are actually using these parks, especially during the busiest seasons (May through September for Yellowstone).

A caller to the program brought up the subject of charging more for people from other countries than for U.S. citizens—a thought that had also crossed my mind while I was listening. After all, when Congress passed the 1872 act setting aside Yellowstone, the very first national park in the world, they stipulated that it was “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” and chances are they were thinking of American people. Whether or not charging more for foreign visitors is a good idea (and I’m not sure it is), that is not a consideration included in the present proposed fee change.

Decide for yourself whether this fee hike would be a wise move by going to: [link] the NPS website.

Science Times tackles the complex Yellowstone wolf scene

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Brad Bulin wolf pelt 2006 In this Tuesday’s “Science Times” section of the New York Times, freelance science writer Jim Robbins explains the push-pull between the lives of Yellowstone’s wolf packs (and the scientists who study them) and the needs and requirements of hunters and ranchers in the three surrounding states.

Since 2011 Montana and Idaho have been conducting managed wolf hunts, but in Wyoming a U.S. Court of Appeals has only this March approved a wolf-hunting plan that is deemed not to endanger the survival of the species in that state.

All the controversy about wolves stems from the 1995 and ’96 introduction of gray wolves (Canis lupus irremotus) into the park (and also into Idaho) from Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. Their population soared within a few years to around 150 wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and scientists like Dr. Douglas Smith found, as quoted by Robbins, that “Yellowstone is the best place in the world to view wolves”—and to study them. This is especially true because the Yellowstone wolves do not fear the thousands of eager visitors who flock there—and incidentally add money to the regional economy. The wolves are thus quite readily visible.

In the years after the introduction of wolves, neighboring ranchers were understandably distressed. Some of their cattle, sheep, and even dogs were killed; before wolf hunting was authorized some ranchers were reimbursed by nonprofit organizations for their losses. It is hoped that protection within the park, combined with limited hunting outside its borders, will provide the needed balance and keep the population of Yellowstone’s wolves to approximately one hundred, as has happened in the last few years.

Robbins tells us much more about the results of research done by Smith and his colleagues. Longevity and social hierarchy within the packs are now better understood, and observation has revealed that wise older wolves serve an important role. Dr. Smith believes that packs are matrilineal. “Males come and go . . . but Gramma, Mom, and the daughter are the ones that stick around.” Here is a link to the whole article, “The New Threat to Wolves in and around Yellowstone.”

For some earlier blog posts about wolves here at YellowstoneTreasures.com, just enter “wolves” in the search bar.

Photo is of Yellowstone Forever Institute instructor Brad Bulin showing a wolf pelt, winter 2006. Photo by Janet Chapple.

News about Yellowstone opening weekend

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I.
Today is the first day you can drive into the park from the North or East Entrance. What’s more, those of us stuck at home can now get predictions of the daytime eruptions of Old Faithful Geyser on the NPS website.

But, if you are anything like me, you are mostly celebrating that the time for your summer trip to this wonderful park is drawing nearer. Just one thing that may give us pause as we contemplate the sights we are anticipating seeing: the crowds are likely to be amazingly large.

Here are links to a University of Montana report (2.7 MB pdf file) on 2016 crowding in that state’s two national parks and a shorter summary of the report, emphasizing Yellowstone, by Sean Reichard of YellowstoneInsider.com.

II.
If you should happen to be one of the people driving into Yellowstone this weekend, you may want to take part in tomorrow’s Earth Day Walk for Science at Old Faithful. This echoes the Washington, DC, Walk for Science. As an ever-curious non-scientist, if I lived anywhere near the park, I would certainly want to participate in that.

Trains to Yellowstone? Oh, for the days . . .

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I just answered an amazing question on quora.com: “What are the dangers of taking a train to Yellowstone?”

To my mind this is a strange question, but perhaps the person asking it does not know where trains do and do not run in the U.S.

It would be great if there were still trains to one or more of the entrances to the park. However, the last passenger train, the Northern Pacific, to terminate at Gardiner, Montana (the North Entrance) arrived with a passel of Girls Scouts in 1955, and one could only get as far as Livingston on a train up to 1979. The other railroads that took passengers near the park had stopped running trains to the vicinity of Yellowstone even before that.

Your present options are taking a tour bus, flying to one of the gateway towns that has an airport and renting a car, or driving in your own car, which people do from every state in the Union.

Personally, I would think it high time that railroads reconsider the possibility of building tracks back to Gardiner, Cody, and/or West Yellowstone. The National Park Service should then set up shuttle buses to all the major points of interest—if only there were money for such a dream to come true any time soon. . . .

March 31st, the birthday of a Welsh painter of Yellowstone scenes

Categories: History, Through Early Yellowstone
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My iPhone shot shows a page from the August 11, 1888 Graphic. You see three scenes engraved from photographs: Livingston, Montana; Pulpit Terrace at Mammoth; and the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. One engraving is from a pencil sketch and two from watercolors: Bath Spring, Orange Spring Mound, and the interior of Devil’s Kitchen.

Today is the one-hundred-seventy-eighth birthday of Thomas Henry Thomas, the author and artist featured at the center of my 19th century collection, Through Early Yellowstone: Adventuring by Bicycle, Covered Wagon, Foot, Horseback, and Skis.

In 1884, you could travel around the new national park either by horseback or by horse-drawn coach. Thomas chose to ride. He wrote to a friend in his native Wales that he painted “quite half, if not more” of his watercolor sketches from “the logger-head of the Mexican saddle of my Cayuse.” In Through Early Yellowstone you can see 26 of his watercolors and one pencil sketch, none of which have ever been seen outside of Wales.

Born in 1839 in Pontypool, Wales, Thomas studied art at the British Royal Academy and also in France and Italy. His online biography does not tell us where he learned to write with his special combination of erudition, grace, and humor.

He spent most of his life in Cardiff, Wales, where he pursued many interests besides art, including archaeology, geology, and Welsh folklore. He served as artist to the London Graphic, a large-format publication with 16- by 12-inch pages. It took four years for the Graphic to turn some of Thomas’s Yellowstone watercolors and collected photographs into engravings. The first page of one of his two articles for the magazine is shown above.

Before Thomas died in his mid seventies in 1915, he bequeathed more than one thousand prints, drawings, and watercolors to the National Museum of Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru in Welsh), of which he was a founding father.

Good news, bad news about visitors to Yellowstone

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fox north entrance Yellowstone

This fox was spotted tracking a snowshoe hare from atop the Roosevelt Arch at the North Entrance earlier this month.

Let’s take a breather from the national news scene to look at the amazing popularity of Yellowstone Park in 2016. The National Park Service office has recently announced record visitation for last year: 4,257,177 visitors came through the gates, up nearly 4 percent over last year’s record. Their January 17th press release attributes much of this huge influx to the number of commercial tour buses—12,778 last year. It’s wonderful to know that people from all over the world are able to travel and enjoy Yellowstone’s wonders, but limits on numbers or timing of visits probably need to be set up to conserve natural resources and keep the park beautiful.

Since the NPS is obliged by law to preserve the parks “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people”—as well as to conserve their natural resources—officials are pondering ways to carry out these sometimes opposing obligations. Way back in May of 2011, I developed a plan for a shuttle system on the west side of the park. Unlike a park such as Zion, which essentially has one central road, the figure-eight system of park roads in Yellowstone does not lend itself well to shuttles, but having only the most-traveled west side accessible by shuttle and creating incentives to encourage able-bodied visitors to use them would help the congestion.

As someone who has enjoyed the park for over three-quarters of a century, I don’t want us to love it to death!

—Janet

Photo credit: Yellowstone Forever, @ynpforever Twitter feed, January 6, 2017